musings of an ex readaholic- procrastinator- dreamer- fangirl.

Month: July 2016

I’m not always the best at sorting through my emotions, so I’ve put off this post for as long as possible. The last few weeks of my OE in Denmark were bittersweet to say the least. It’s a classic contradiction- torn between your newly acquired love affair with this place and a yearning for home.

There is a feeling of happiness that you get to relieve the intense homesickness you’ve been experiencing but there is also a deep dullness that starts to form in your heart as time ticks by a little faster with each passing day. The classmates who you’ve come to love start breaking down at farewell gatherings; now every moment I would have taken for granted over the last few months becomes significant as I slowly start to realize that we can never get back these moments again.

I left Denmark for a week to go travelling before I actually headed home, and this feeling hit once again when I got on the bus that would take me away from the city that had in many ways become my home. Some of my friends came to say goodbye, and they waited at the bus stop till I was on my way. I waved through the tinted glass knowing they couldn’t see me, and they waved from outside not knowing whether I could see them. I teared up and it was one of the very few times that I did. I couldn’t escape any longer from the inevitable goodbyes, because it was happening right then and I had to face it.

I always joked about coming back ‘super cultured’ from my OE, but the truth is I do feel different. Maybe it’s not in the same ways I joked about, but in the ways I view myself and friendships, and the world around me. I was overwhelmingly happy to finally get back home that I felt like I immediately reverted back to my old self in some inexplicable way. But the truth is I am not that girl anymore, but I am. I feel different and I can barely understand it from inside the bus, so how can I help anyone else understand it looking through tinted glass.

Less than a month after Vice President Joe Biden penned an emotional letter to the woman sexually assaulted by Brock Turner, the White House has announced sweeping new rules for future visits to colleges campuses.